So, remember on Saturday night, when it was pouring down rain & there was lightning & thunder & high winds? Guess what we were doing? Camping!!
Lucky for us, it wasn’t hardcore, back-to-nature camping, but backyard camping! Our friends host an annual party that brings people from as far away as the Carolinas. This is hosted by their parents who live nearby-but-rural enough to have free-range chickens. Although the chickens were cooped up for the weekend due to the many guest dogs roaming about. They were actually pretty bitter about it.
An Angry Chicken
Their super-fun family also included us on our winter trip to Jiminy Peak, so we are pretty much ready to adopt them as our in-town grandparents. Besides Mary, of course.
Grammy Gave Tractor Rides
We had some deliciously excellent food.  There were volleyball games and bubbles and washers games and the kids managed to pop two different Slip ‘n’ Slides. Then some more deliciously excellent food.
Yummy.
As evening fell, the music started. Alas, I have no musical talent, but between the various guests there were drums, guitars, mandolins, and plenty of singers. J picked up a tambourine and sat among the jamming grown-ups, patting it earnestly. It was pretty adorable.  My prediction: there will absolutely be a tambourine purchase in the next few months. And not some bright plastic thing, either. Something gen-u-wine. I’m going to have to pay better attention to family jam events from now on.
It was all going quite well and the fireflies were just coming out when suddenly the storm came. People continued to play music while various camp chairs (and our super-cool camp couch) and music cases were shoved under a tent. Many children were sobbing in terror and rushing inside the house. M was completely unfazed, and J was sobbing because she wanted to roast marshmallows. We stayed near the campfire waiting it out.
J feels the rain from under a tent.
The storm passed, we finally perfected a golden-brown marshmallow, and our tent stayed nice and dry.
Between the house guests and the camping, we’ve all been pretty wiped out at our house. I’m sorry for the atrocious typos that I’ve found in the last few posts–you know I’m usually better than that.  We have no major plans for the next week, so it will be nice to recover a bit. Still, it’s been tons of fun.
